4. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services: Winter Pressures

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:28 pm on 13 February 2018.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 4:28, 13 February 2018

Thank you for the comments and questions. I wish that spring really were around the corner, but, as I said earlier, there can be no guarantee that winter neatly comes to an end on St David's Day.

I would say that winter really is different. I just don't think it's correct to say that the pressure is year-round and that it's no different in winter and that we just have a bit more respiratory illness. In going around emergency departments right across the country, there's been a very consistent theme that is borne out in the facts and figures on the number of 85-year-olds in our hospital emergency departments and hospital beds, and that is that, in winter, we do see a larger number of very sick, very frail people and often much older people. And that is what creates the pressure, because the numbers go down but actually the challenge and the demand for the hospital capacity for really sick people who need to be in a hospital bed go up. And more of those people will spend more time in our A&E units and in our hospital beds, and that is what creates much of the pressure, and indeed pressure in local healthcare as well. That's why I announced the relaxation of the quality and outcomes framework too. Again, much of our conversation otherwise ends up being about ambulances and hospitals.

On bed capacity and flu, I think I dealt with those points in answer to the first set of questions from Angela Burns. We will of course listen to the evidence from Public Health Wales, their surveillance evidence on the circulation of flu, the type and what we should do for the next year.

On 111, again in response to Angela Burns's question, I indicated that we would have something on a national roll-out for 111 over the coming years. And on pharmacy, I'm really pleased that you mentioned a number of things we could do differently with Choose Well—Choose Pharmacy being one part of that. The last time I updated Members, 60 per cent of pharmacies in the country had the Choose Pharmacy system; it's now 66 per cent of community pharmacies that have access to Choose Pharmacy. That's a real success story, and we are piloting a roll-out of further access to the GP record in community pharmacies—I'll know more about that at the end of March—to make a different choice. And in that, we are ahead of both Scotland and England in actually having that greater access for our community pharmacies. So, we're investing in different parts of our system to give people opportunities to access that advice and support in every community, on a much easier basis.